Umbrella Initiative
The Umbrella Initiative is the outgrowth of the FPA Think Tank at The University of North Florida (UNF), a collaborative effort between FPA and The Florida Center for Public and International Policy at UNF. The Umbrella Initiative Portal will consist of three separate components which, when combined, will guarantee small and disadvantaged business owners interested in government contracting access – in one place – of all critical procurement elements including federal, state and local government contracting: communication, registration, certification, training, bid searching, bid responses, contract funding (access to capital), networking and team building, and contracting results. Most importantly, the proposed umbrella portal will be designed to allow for the cross promotion of their components and for the measurement of the results of the individual efforts including usage.
The procurement services to be offered through the Umbrella Initiative will be personalized to each local area serviced, augmented by existing resources (such as local SBDC centers) and will be managed by the counseling staff of the service providers which will be trained on its usage.